130 year old Catlin's Travel Pocket Chess Wallet. Review and Pics.

I've been looking for one of these vintage slotted chess wallets for a while. This 1890s Catlin's version popped up for a reasonable price, and I jumped on it like a live grenade.

All the original pieces are present and accounted for. Incredibly, the leather play area still has luster. The cloth spine and glue is still holding. They seriously don't make them like this anymore. This 1890/1900s chess set was around with Thomas Edison and the Ford Model T. 

*Spoiler Alert* — It still works after 130 years! Haha.

Very nice!

What a wonderful find! That is a great design, really space-efficient. The slot on the left for a scoresheet makes perfect sense, too. Wow, hanging out in the CB&E forum is turning out to be very educational. 

@EfimLG47 Those were my exact words when I first opened the package. Hah!

@Powderdigit The pieces are made of thin plastic, flexible, like shirt collar tabs. Blank on the reverse side. The images are printed(?) on somehow? Not sure. There is some surface dirt on the plastic pieces but I'm leaving it as-is. No way I'm risking losing any of the original ink. 

@Schachmonkey  I was most concerned about the leather. I'm sure those slots had not been used for over a quarter century. Was debating whether or not to even move any of the pieces for fear of it just crumbling to dust.  LOL My internal voice said, Eff-it, I bought it, I have to play with at least ONCE. Hah!

@TimmyCorkery THanks. I had no idea what that left-side, corner pocket was for. I thought it was to hold extra pieces or something. Maybe for steam-engine, travel ticket stub. But, yeah a scoresheet makes total sense. Now I'm off to find a vintage scoresheet to tuck in there. What are the chances of finding a vintage Bobby Fischer signed scoresheet on Etsy? LOL

Nice find @Pawnerai!

@Pawnerai, this is far too cool a find. I'm kinda grumpy at you right now because I've been over on r/leathercraft getting some feedback about construction techniques (your hi-res images have been really useful, as has the patent number), and this is so interesting a challenge that I'm seriously considering pushing a few projects aside to experiment with it. Quit finding cool stuff! You're messing up my project queue!

I mean, D'Addario does custom printed guitar picks, and a long teardrop would probably serve for the pieces, as well as being more durable than a popsicle stick, which was my first inclination. Although, once/if I figured out a cutting jig, I could use custom rubber stamps for the piece markings, which would significantly reduce the materials cost since custom picks have to be purchased in bulk. It would affect the scale of the final item, but... okay, no. No. I have other work to do and a non-trivially long project queue. 

But...

EDIT: To be clear, I'm not really grumpy at you. I wasn't sure if I needed to /s or not.

@TimmyCorkery

Guitar picks are about 1inch at the widest. Are you thinking of making an XL slotted chess leather wallet? The chess piece tabs are barely 1cm at the widest. I've found that button-down, shirt collar tabs are strangely the exact width and material of these chess piece tabs. The length will have to be adjusted. But since you clearly do not have the time to pursue this project, this information is just provided for informational purposes. LOL

Maybe 3d printing is an option? 

Okay, THAT is a spectacular idea. It would allow for the whole board to be about the width of a half-letter notepad, which my googling seems to show is a very common size for spiral-bound chess scorebooks. Not that I'm taking notes or anything... [scribbles furiously]

What an amazing find. Congratulations and enjoy it!

That's cool! I want one!

An exquisite example of a period chess wallet in fantastic shape.  Beautiful!

Great find. I found one about a year ago and a couple of the pieces were brittle and broke trying to get them out of the slots after all these years.  

Mine was used by an officer during WW2 who was on the island of Tarawa, a big battle in the Pacific.  He has his name and rank on the inside and location. I found someone who has extra pieces but they wanted more for some extra pieces than I picked up the wallet for.  Surprisingly the leather is still supple with no signs of rot at all. 

I agree with @Krames. That is so cool @TundraMike. It is a good piece of history.

Mike, makes me wonder whether heat caused them to stick and ultimately disintegrate.

Thanks guys. When I first received the chess wallet, I was extremely concerned about the integrity of the materials. Leather, cloth, board, plastic, glue. I would've been devastated if I damaged it on my watch.

I used a thin plastic coffee stirrer to coax each leather slot open and make sure everything is clear, open, and smooth before using the actual pieces. If one of the slots was stuck, I could totally see a piece bending and cracking if pushed too hard. The condition of the pieces seem decent to my eye. I flicked them a bit with my finger and they still had some resilience to them. But I wasn't going to push my luck.

@TundraMike I've seen Soviet cloth and cardboard wallets for sale in terrible, terrible condition, but the pieces are all there. I've been tempted to just purchase one just to have a spare set of pieces. Good luck in your search.

Thanks, I wouldn't play with it anyway. It has so much history that a GI has this on Tarawa, one of the most historic battles in the Pacific. Maybe even try to find the family it belonged to. The person I bought it from got it in a locker auction I believe.